


let me give you what you're giving me

by custardpringle



Category: Agent Pendergast Series - Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anxiety Attacks, Character Death Fix, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, OT3, YOU get a near-death experience and YOU get a near-death experience and YOU get
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:15:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26057086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/custardpringle/pseuds/custardpringle
Summary: "Have I mentioned lately," said Bill, "how much I appreciate you showing my wife a good time while I'm indisposed?"Margo spluttered, gaze jerking up from her crossword puzzle. Her cheeks were warm, the moment to laugh it off was already passing, and even an "indisposed" Bill Smithback could be a dangerously sharp reader of people.
Relationships: Margo Green/Nora Kelly/William Smithback
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	let me give you what you're giving me

**Author's Note:**

> Betaed by sophiahelix and hikaru; title by VAST.

Sooner or later, Margo thought as she entered the Feversham Clinic, they were just going to have to start permanently assigning rooms to some people. Herself, for starters, and then--

The thought had the general shape of a joke, but it wasn’t amusing enough to bother finishing, even in her own head.

She knew just what she was going to say to Nora, the words of comfort carefully planned out--or she had, until she climbed the stairs to Bill Smithback’s room and said, before she could stop herself, “Oh my God.”

He looked so still in the bed, so gray, that it had shocked her--but Nora, in an armchair at his bedside, looked somehow even worse. Her head was bandaged and her face worn with fatigue, one eye dark and swollen. She started at the sound of Margo’s voice, like she’d been a million miles away. "Margo?” she said, quietly. "I thought you were in Boston."

“I was,” said Margo, slipping into the room and touching her shoulder. “Sorry I startled you. I’ve just never seen him so quiet.”

That _was_ meant to be a joke, if a very gentle one, but Nora didn’t respond right away. “I was only gone a few minutes,” she said finally. “There was so much blood, and then that thing came at me, and--oh my God, Margo, there was so much blood.” Her voice was hollow.

Margo felt much the way Nora sounded. A yawning pit was opening in her gut; she felt as though she was waiting to find out what emotion would fill it up. “How is he?"

"Stable enough to be moved up here while I was still in the hospital. Otherwise--the doctors aren't promising anything yet." Nora shrugged. "Pendergast seems to think something else might happen, but he won't say what."

That was an important point to clarify, but not the most urgent one. "And how are you?" Margo asked, perching on the arm of Nora’s chair. Stairs still wore her out, some days, but she’d gotten used to covering for it.

Nora just shook her head, lips pressed thin. "I’m really glad you came," was all she said. She leaned against Margo's hip, warm and blessedly solid.

“I’m here,” said Margo. “No matter what.”

She squeezed Nora’s shoulder again, and then slid an arm around her, keeping her close. If it wasn’t quite the way a friend would soothe a friend--well, she didn’t care right now, as long as it was what helped.

“He’s a real jerk, you know,” she said after a while. “Doing this to you on your anniversary.”

And Nora finally laughed, a short harsh sound. “God, isn’t he, though?”

\-------

Nora was getting over a concussion, and between that and the general chaos, it turned out that she didn’t remember calling Margo. There didn’t seem to be any use in pressing the point; Margo remembered it well enough for both of them.

She’d woken up to a message, Nora’s voice tight with barely controlled terror--”Margo, please, something’s happened--” and tried to call back; straight to voice mail. She’d gotten hold of Vincent D’Agosta, finally, when she was already in her car on the way to New York. He’d given her the barest gist of events and gently redirected her to Cold Spring.

The staff here all knew her well, were maybe too willing to talk, and now she knew more than she really wanted to.

Someone had broken into the apartment and attacked Bill with a knife, getting him once in the arm and multiple times in the back. He’d dragged himself to the knife drawer in the kitchen, tried to fight back, but when he turned to defend himself the intruder had stabbed him in the chest, just shy of his heart. He’d been left for dead there, bleeding out--and, adding gruesome insult to injury, a fish hook had been lodged into his tongue.

Which was when Nora had come home, and the intruder had hit her over the head on his way out, an almost offhand epilogue to the larger brutality. She’d glimpsed Bill already, though, and woken up in the ambulance inconsolable, thinking she’d seen him dead.

Margo kept trying to order these facts in her mind, put them in a shape she could handle and work with logically, and it kept not working.

It was an open and shut case, D’Agosta had said, some guy who lived down the hall or something. He’d said “open and shut” so many times that Margo stopped believing him. When she tried to press him he’d just said, “Never going fishing again, that’s for sure,” with patently forced good humor, and hung up.

\-------

Margo finally made it to her apartment around midafternoon. She wanted nothing more than a nap, but there were things to take care of before she could rest easily.

Back in May when she was released from her own hospital stay, the first thing she’d done was redecorate, with her mother’s help. They’d tried to make it look organic: nightlights in the bathroom, electric candles in the windows, decorative little lamps and strings of lights in the kitchen and living room. A new, brighter range hood. Slatted doors and push lights for every closet. A solid platform bedframe.

There were never any fully dark places in Margo’s apartment, and there was nowhere for anyone to hide.

Everything looked in order on her first checkthrough, but she’d been in Boston for weeks, and some of the candles and light strings were on battery-powered timers. Margo dug into her bag, took out a bulk package of batteries, and then opened her phone and called her mother.

“Hey,” she said, pulling a chair up to the living room window and climbing onto it. “I wanted to let you know I got in safe. I think I’m going to stay in New York for a while.” She took down a battery pack from the window frame and tucked her phone between ear and shoulder while she swapped in fresh batteries. “No, he’s in pretty bad shape, and Nora’s brother lives out of state. I think she should have somebody around.” She stepped down again, picked up a candle from the coffee table, and flicked the switch. No light; she clicked new batteries in there, too. “Of course you met him. You remember, they brought that Zabar’s box with the salami and those pickled carrots you liked--Yeah.” She swallowed. “The redhead at the funeral. That was her.”

\-------

“The good news is,” said Nora on the phone a couple of days later, “he’s awake and talking.”

“What’s the bad news?”

“He’s awake and talking.”

\-------

Bill wasn’t awake at the moment Margo next arrived, which gave her a minute to really appreciate the surreality of the moment; they were back where they were six months ago, only then he’d been the one looming awkwardly over her. She sat down and peered into his face. It seemed to her he was resting more easily than the last time she’d seen him.

“Hey, you,” she said quietly, not sure whether she wanted to wake him.

Bill twitched in response to her voice. Then he blinked awake and slowly focused on her. “Margo?”

She smiled back at him, lightheaded with relief. “How’re you feeling?”

“Margo Green,” said Bill again, more alertly, with an odd note of satisfaction. “We have _got_ to stop meeting like this.”

Margo glanced up at Nora, who just rolled her eyes. She was looking a little better, too; the bandage was gone from her forehead and her black eye was fading to green at the edges.

“Hey,” Bill went on, after a minute. His voice was mushy in a way Margo didn’t associate with painkillers; he must have needed stitches in his tongue. “Don't disappear again while I'm gone.”

"I won't," said Margo, around something in her throat.

His eyes were drifting shut, but when she took his hand he held on tight.

\-------

Bill and Nora had come to see her a lot when she was recovering--first here at the clinic, then when she was released home to her apartment. More often after her mother had gone home to Boston. They’d invited themselves over with dinner a couple times a week, separately or together; it was a pretty transparent attempt to keep Margo company while she still wasn’t getting out and about much.

Once in August Nora had gone out of town for a weekend to visit her brother, and on Friday night Bill had turned up at Margo's door in the crumpled remains of a tuxedo, reeking of expensive Scotch. "Fuckin' press dinners," he'd explained, "fuckin' Harriman," and stumbled into her guest room without invitation.

In the morning he'd been gone again, but there had been a small hot wax-paper bundle on Margo's kitchen table: a steaming fresh bagel with a fried egg and pork roll.

Margo hadn’t minded. It was odd but not unpleasant, having Bill and Nora in her space often enough for them to become comfortable there. But all the same, when they were about to leave one night, she’d felt obliged to say, “You know you don’t need to babysit me, right?”

“We’re not _babysitting,_ ” Nora had said, with a mild scorn Margo probably deserved.

“You’re forgetting what a bad scare you gave us,” Bill had said. “We have to check once in a while to make sure you’re still real, lotus blossom.” And then he’d caught up her hand and kissed it, only the briefest warm pressure before he let go.

It was the way he would have acted a decade ago to annoy her--or sometimes to annoy Greg Kawakita, who had always made a sour face that Bill knew Margo found privately hilarious. It had been a joke, for old times’ sake or something. It had to be.

But the fact was that her first instinct, while the warmth of Bill’s kiss still lingered on her knuckles, had been to look at Nora to see her reaction.

Nora had looked startled, yes; flushed, yes. But not upset. She’d looked, if anything, contemplative. Like Bill and Margo were two of her potsherds and she was trying to figure out where they fit.

Whatever it meant, it didn’t seem to have happened again. Margo had tried not to worry about it too much.

\------

Margo took to riding the train up to Cold Spring with Nora, a few evenings a week. It was a nice trip, not too long, and the late October foliage around West Point was incredible.

If some deep-seated and juvenile area of her brain kept spitting out comparisons between the fall foliage and Nora’s hair and eyes, well, that was Margo’s own private problem, and she would just go right on stomping that back down.

She’d noticed that Nora was working later and later; Margo suspected that some nights, after they pulled back into Penn Station, she hopped a C train right back to the museum. There was no blockbuster exhibition in progress, she knew, not even a grant application to worry at. Nora was going back to her lab at night purely to put off going home.

“Must be weird,” she said casually to Nora one night. “Having the apartment to yourself.”

Nora shrugged, looking out the window. “It’s too quiet,” she admitted, and then, reluctantly: “Every time I unlock the front door I feel sick. I keep wondering--what’s going to be waiting for me?”

Margo knew that feeling all too well. “If you need a change of scenery--” she began.

“What I need is to get used to it,” Nora said, a little snappish. “It’s _our_ apartment. I just need to reacclimate, or something.”

“Well, while you’re reacclimating, my guest room’s still all made up from when my mom was staying with me.” It was friendly concern, Margo told herself, nothing else. Nora needed somewhere to feel safe that wasn’t her damn _job_. Nothing to do with how good it felt to have Nora in her space.

“That’s very kind,” said Nora. “But I need to--”

“You need to sleep.” Margo reached over and squeezed her hand.

“I’ll get a handle on it. Really.” Nora paused, lips pursed. “Hey. You know the _West Sider_?”

“I don’t even know what that is.”

Nora pulled a folded tabloid paper out of her handbag. “It’s some neighborhood daily. Dr. Hornby found a copy from the other day and thought I should see it.” She spread it across the tiny folding table between their seats. “I don’t know this Kidd woman, but she sure thinks she knows something about us.”

The front page screamed: TIMES REPORTER ATTACKED BY ZOMBIE?

“What the hell?” Margo stared at the headline, than up at Nora, her concern sharpening painfully. “What the _hell?_ ” 

\-------

The headline preoccupied Margo so thoroughly that she didn’t notice the man who was coming out of the clinic until he called out to her by name.

“Lieutenant D’Agosta!” Nora said, and only then did Margo recognize her old friend. “Did you get to talk to Bill?”

“Sure, for all the good it did.” D’Agosta sighed. “Bad news is he didn’t see anything we didn’t already know--says it was Colin Fearing that attacked him, same as you and your neighbors said. And it’s not hard to figure out who’d have it in for him, either. All you gotta do is search his bylines on the _New York Times_ website. Every one, a new suspect.”

“I thought you were sure it was Fearing,” said Margo. She thought afresh of the _West Sider_ article--of what exactly it had told them about Colin Fearing.

“Just tying some stuff up,” said D’Agosta. “Good news is, we probably won’t have to keep coming up here and hassling him while he’s healing up.”

“Sure,” said Nora. “Well, I better--I want to go up and see Bill.”

“Hey, Margo,” said D’Agosta. “Hang on a sec.”

“Sure,” said Margo, and let Nora go on into the building alone.

“I was wondering,” he said. “Since you’re here. Do you know of any rare drug or plant that would let someone fake their own death? Convince the paramedics and everything?”

Margo, despite herself, laughed. “Not outside of Shakespeare. And certainly not one that would withstand a full autopsy.”

“Ah,” said D’Agosta, ruefully. “You’ve seen the paper.”

“I’ve seen the paper.”

“Well, it was worth a shot.” He relaxed and looked her over. “You doing okay? I think Laura would wanna know.”

“Laura?” said Margo. She didn’t think she knew a Laura.

D’Agosta, to her astonishment, blushed very faintly. “Captain Heyward. She was pretty weirded out by what happened to you.”

Margo only faintly remembered Heyward, the detective who’d investigated her apparent death, but she smiled politely anyway. “Tell her I’m doing a lot better. Thanks.” 

She went upstairs and found Nora sitting on the edge of Bill’s bed. The _West Sider_ had been crammed into her handbag, safely out of his sight, but she was saying, “Do you know a Caitlyn Kidd?”

“Sure,” said Bill vaguely to the ceiling. He’d moved, or been moved, to lie on his back; that must mean he was healing well. “Kid from some neighborhood tabloid, right? Hi, Margo.”

“Hey.” Margo folded herself into the visitor’s chair. “How’re you feeling?”

“Loving the change of scenery. Never been so glad to stare at a ceiling in my life.” He patted Nora’s knee. “What were you asking about?”

“Caitlyn Kidd,” Nora repeated. “She’s been asking about your animal sacrifice story--showed up at the museum today looking for me. I was wondering if she was worth talking to.”

“The opportunistic little rat,” said Bill with sleepy approval. “Well, she seems like she’s got a good head on her shoulders. If someone’s going to step on me to get a leg up it might as well be her.”

“A ringing endorsement,” said Nora dryly. “Be right back.” She got up and vanished into the bathroom.

Bill watched her go, then turned his gaze to Margo. She’d thought he was falling asleep, but he looked fully alert now. “How’s she holding up? She told me she’s fine, but she’d say that no matter what.”

“I’m not sure,” said Margo slowly.

“You know you don’t need to sugar-coat anything for me, right?”

“I really don’t know, Bill.” Margo pressed her lips together. “I’ve been trying to get her out some, but she’s holed up in her lab too much. And I don’t think she’s sleeping too well. Maybe she just needs time.”

“You gotta keep an eye on her, Margo.”

“Nora can take care of herself just fine.”

“Yeah, better than anyone else I know. That’s the problem.” He was watching her with a serious frankness that she wasn’t used to seeing from him. “The more something scares her, the more she’s gotta prove to herself and everyone else she’s not scared. This brave little soldier face she’s putting on? That’s a bad sign.” 

Margo’s stomach twisted. She didn’t know how to explain that she didn’t trust herself to evaluate her own risk-taking any more, never mind Nora’s. But she would do her damnedest, all the same, for Nora’s sake.

“I’ll keep an eye,” she promised. It didn’t feel like enough.

\-------

Margo had always known pretty much immediately whether or not she was attracted to someone, and never had it been more instant and devastating than with Nora Kelly.

Months ago, when she’d walked into the Bones and first seen Nora laughing at a corner table, hazel eyes bright, something inside her had turned inside out and never felt right since. No wonder it had taken her a moment to recognize Bill in the other seat--and if he hadn’t been there, Margo might really have embarrassed herself.

Instead she and Nora had hated each other within about thirty seconds, which had somehow only made Nora more compelling. It was infuriating as hell, the daze she could put Margo in, whether they were getting along or not. She knew she couldn’t afford to be infatuated with a colleague, especially not a female colleague. Especially not her friend’s wife.

But all the common sense in the world hadn’t made her stop wanting things she couldn’t have, and it couldn’t keep her from being nervous tonight as she pushed into the bar for the first time in months.

Nora had suggested it, and Margo had been pining after one of their burgers, so she hadn’t argued. But it seemed darker inside than she remembered, shadows crowding in the corners and among the animal bones that encrusted the ceiling. She looked around nervously; at least there didn’t seem to be anyone she knew in here.

Besides Nora, who waved to her from a table in a corner--one of the brighter ones, thankfully. A light on the wall above burnished her dark red hair almost golden. “Feeling a bit of déja vu,” she said, when Margo came over.

Margo hopped up onto a stool, keeping her back to the wall. “I could pick a fight with you if you like. For old times’ sake.”

“Pretty sure that one was my fault,” Nora admitted.

“For all the difference it made in the end,” said Margo. She felt a lingering trace of bitterness, but that was for the museum board, not Nora. January was a lifetime ago.

A waiter came by, and Nora ordered a beer and a chicken sandwich; Margo asked for a cheeseburger and a Diet Coke.”Thought you were a wine girl,” said Nora.

“I was.” Margo shrugged. “I was on so many meds for a while there that I had to stop drinking. Never really got back in the habit.”

“Well, if you want help clearing out the last of your collection--” Nora smiled conspiratorially at her.

Their drinks arrived, and Margo took a grateful gulp of her cold soda. She’d forgotten how stifling the atmosphere could be in here--or maybe she’d used to enjoy it more. Or maybe, worst of all, it was Nora’s full attention that was warming her.

“As nice as this is,” said Nora, “I wanted to talk to you about something.”

Margo folded her arms on the table. “Sure, what’s up?”

Nora pitched her voice a little lower, as if anyone was listening anyway. “I met Caitlyn Kidd, you know, from the _West Sider_? Bill was right--she’s pretty sharp.”

“You said she was chasing his story about the Ville, right? That creepy animal sacrifice cult living in Inwood Hill Park.”

“Yeah, they’re the people he’s pissed off most recently. Them and that creep Kline, and D’Agosta’s already turning his company upside down.”

The back of Margo’s neck prickled with sudden alarm. “You sound like a woman with a plan.”

Nora’s eyes gleamed with alarming fervor in the shadowy bar. “We’re going up there to check it out ourselves. Tomorrow night.”

Margo stared at her. “You’re what?”

“Come with us,” Nora said. “I’ve read Bill’s books, I know you know how to look after yourself--I’d really like to have you along.”

Margo choked, the reflexive _no_ to the engulfing dark of the forest and the reflexive _yes_ to anything Nora asked trying to voice themselves simultaneously. She swallowed them both down. "You know that’s not me, right? That's some cooler, smarter version of me that Bill made up to sell books." And even if it had been her, it sure as hell wasn't any more.

"No, I'm pretty sure he actually thinks you're like that," said Nora. She patted Margo’s arm. "I'm pretty sure you are."

"Flattery will get you nowhere," said Margo, though the warmth of the compliment--and Nora’s hand--was washing all through her. “Seriously, I’m not coming with you. I can’t.”

“Please, Margo.” Nora leaned closer. “Do you know how many times I’ve thought I lost him? I can’t take it any more. I have to do something. Even if it’s just to see what’s happening up there.”

Margo knew she’d do anything for Nora if she could, and she knew what she’d promised Bill, and she knew what she _could_ do. She thought fast, trying to reconcile the three. “First date rules, then.” Don’t go, was what she wanted to say, just don’t go, this is pointless, but she knew it would be no use.

Nora blinked. “What?”

“I’m not coming with you,” said Margo, with more certainty this time. She leaned forward in turn, desperate for Nora to listen. “Because if you and Caitlyn go out there, someone has to know where you are. You go into those woods and then you text me or call me when you get out, okay?”

Nora bit her lip, thinking. They’d leaned in so close together that when she nodded her hair tickled Margo’s cheek. 

“Promise,” Margo insisted. “I need to know you’re going to be okay.”

“I promise.”

\-------

But Nora didn’t text that night, or call.

Margo sat up waiting, fully dressed, just in case. She’d packed up her shoulder bag--even opened the small, expensive safe on a high closet shelf and taken down her long-unused pistol and ammo. If she didn’t hear from Nora, she’d be ready to go to Inwood Hill Park and do whatever she had to--at least, she hoped she’d be ready.

The trouble, she had recently explained to a psychiatrist, was that not only were the things that scared her real, so were several other things that she hadn’t known to worry about until they tried to kill her. She had lent him a copy of _Reliquary_ as proof. He hadn’t tried to argue the point again.

By three AM Margo was good for nothing but sitting on the sofa, heart hammering in her throat, thinking about the forest swallowing Nora up and never spitting her back out. About going in herself, and never returning. She gripped the strap of her bag and played out every possible ending to the night; each one was progressively worse.

By the time she surfaced enough to remember her meds, she was probably on her way out the other side, but she dug them out anyway. Just as she shook out a pill with trembling hands and dry-swallowed it, someone knocked on the door, and Margo screamed and dropped the bottle.

“Margo? Are you okay?” The call wasn’t loud, especially through the door, but she knew Nora in an instant.

“Yeah,” she said. It came out too shaky to be audible, so she tried again, louder. “I’m okay, I’m coming.”

She fumbled the door open and found Nora, looking paler and more tired than Margo had seen her yet. Her face was grimy, her jeans smeared with mud to the knee. “Guess I didn’t wake you,” she said, looking Margo over.

“Just startled me.” Margo let her in and shut the door. “Nora, what happened?”

“You said I could sleep here,” said Nora. “If I needed.” She looked around the living room but didn’t seem to take anything in.

“Of course. But--”

“Thanks.” Nora kicked filthy sneakers off her feet, left them on the mat, and hugged Margo briefly. “I’d feel better knowing you’re around.”

“Jesus, you’re shaking,” said Margo, although in fact it might still have been her. “What happened? Is Caitlyn--”

“Caitlyn’s safe. I just need a shower and a good night’s sleep. Please, Margo.” Nora kissed her cheek, slipped past her, and went down the hallway towards the bathroom. She looked so tired that Margo feared she might stumble into a wall.

Margo stared after her, but didn’t have it in her to push. Either the Xanax or Nora’s appearance was muffling her anxiety, but not silencing it. She felt a horrible sick buzzing under her skin, the now-factual certainty that something was wrong but she didn’t know what.

\-------

Someone had made the mistake of giving Bill a copy of the _Times_. He had convinced a nurse to prop him up on a few pillows, and was making a show of flipping through the paper and making thoughtful faces, though Margo could tell from his glazed expression that he was too tired to actually absorb most of what he was reading.

He had, of course, taken in all the salient points they’d most hoped he wouldn’t.

“Bryce Harriman,” he said, with the deliberation of a man being weaned off morphine, “has finally cracked for good. He thinks Colin Fearing was _dead_ when he tried to kill me.”

“Actually,” Margo began, and then hesitated, looking over at Nora.

“Actually, what?”

“Caitlyn knew first,” Nora admitted. “The coroner’s office confirmed it and then the _Times_ picked it up a day later. Colin Fearing died ten days before he attacked us. Threw himself into the river and drowned.”

“I thought he looked strung out, sure, maybe sick, but--” He glanced between them. “Either of you buy into this?”

“I don’t know,” Margo admitted. “There has to be a trick in it somewhere, but I can’t see where.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Nora said. “Caitlyn and I, we’re--looking into some things.” Which sounded to Margo like a very generous description of events. Jesus, she hoped Nora knew what she was doing.

“Things?”

Nora glanced away. “I’ll tell you if it turns into anything.”

"It's not fair," said Bill. "I'm missing all the excitement and you won't even tell me--"

Nora snorted. "What, you haven't had enough excitement already?" 

The truth was, Margo missed talking through things with him, his knack for coming at a problem sideways. But Bill was still weak and healing, and on painkillers to boot, even today was one of his more lucid days. It wouldn’t do anyone any good to explain things to him, at least not yet.

Then again, he wasn’t exactly relaxed now. "I swear to God, if that little shit Harriman makes hay out of of my near-death experience the way he did when you--"

"Hey!" said Margo, cutting off that train of thought for everyone's sake. "Listen to me, okay? This is important."

He blinked up at her. "Yes, lotus blossom?"

Given the painkillers, Margo let the old nickname slide. "Bill,” she said gravely, “I wouldn't confirm my own _name_ if Bryce Harriman asked."

Harriman had, in fact, tried to call her recently. Many times. She was no more interested in talking to him about Bill’s attack than she had been about her own.

Bill broke out in a slightly loopy smile. "That's my girl."

\-------

"Hey, said Margo, on the train home from Cold Spring one night. "You climb, right?"

"All my life, until I moved east," said Nora. "Why?"

"I used to go to a climbing gym, when I lived in New York before. Never had a chance to find a new one since I moved back, but--" Margo held up two red slips of paper. "I got two trial passes to some new bouldering place. Thought you might be interested."

Nora eyed her. "You think I'm working too much."

"You said it, not me," said Margo. "Maybe I just want the moral support. It's been almost a year."

"I always thought indoor climbing was kind of creepy," Nora admitted. "But okay, sure. What the hell."

\-------

“Oh, God,” said Margo, sitting down heavily on the locker room bench. “What a disaster.” Her shoulders and arms burned, and a duller ache was setting into her lower back, in a place she knew wouldn’t hurt if her core strength was what it should be. She was profoundly glad they’d come on a weekday afternoon when the climbing gym was near-empty.

She thought about lying down, but Nora curbed that temptation by sitting down next to her. “I’m not exactly in practice myself. Anyway, I thought you looked great.”

This was rich coming from Nora, whose strong back and arms looked so good on a climbing wall that she had been personally responsible for Margo losing her grip at least three times in the past hour. Even now, her exhaustion and the sheen of cooling sweat flattered her.

Margo almost regretted suggesting they do this together--almost.

“A year ago I could bench more than my own bodyweight,” said Margo. “And now look at me. I worked so hard to be able to protect myself and what the hell good did it do in the end, anyway?” She felt an ominous internal tremor and thought: _this is not going to be another thing I go into a tailspin about. Not this, too._

Nora reached over and pushed a strand of hair out of Margo’s face, fingers brushing her ear. “You fought like hell,” she said, as quietly certain as if she’d been there. “And you lived, and you came back to the people who love you. That’s what.” Her hand drifted back to rest between Margo’s shoulders--and then her fingers stumbled over the long twisted scar there, and went still. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” said Margo. She was shamefully glad that Nora hadn’t flinched away. “I’m trying to leave it uncovered on purpose. I don’t want to get in the habit of worrying about it, you know?”

“Can I--” Nora said, and Margo only hesitated a second before pulling her hair over one shoulder to make the scar easier to see. She felt one of Nora’s fingers trace down her spine and bit her lip, trying to keep her breathing steady.

“The doctors said stab scars heal pretty cleanly in the long term,” she offered. “That’ll be some consolation for Bill.”

Nora stared at her and then laughed. “You really never read _Thunderhead,_ did you?”

“Even when I was in the hospital I wasn’t desperate enough to read _Thunderhead,_ ” said Margo. “No offense to either of you.”

“I guess I shouldn’t laugh about it, but some things you have to after a while, I guess.” Nora looked sidelong at her, more solemn. Her thumb was rubbing absent circles at the nape of Margo’s neck, which made it difficult to think clearly. “Bill got hurt pretty badly in Utah. His back’s been all scarred up already for years. You really didn’t know?”

“No, I didn’t know,” said Margo, shuddering. “That’s horrible.”

“I don't think he minds so much,” Nora confided. "Sometimes I catch him admiring the scars in the mirror." She patted Margo’s back once more and then removed her hand. “He was furious, you know. When we thought you were--”

"No, he wasn't," said Margo with automatic disbelief. Bill's capacity for long-term rancor was notably limited, and seemed largely reserved for Bryce Harriman. It was, ironically, the most infuriating thing about him; he couldn’t stay angry at anyone or anything for more than about five minutes, but it never stopped him stringing out an argument for hours or even days, just on principle.

The thought of him seething for weeks about anything was beyond her.

“Boiling mad,” said Nora, “like I've never seen him, and I kept thinking, I should be angry too, but I mostly felt like I’d been hit by a truck. It wrecked us both, thinking you were gone.”

“You barely knew me then,” said Margo, lost. She had no idea what she was supposed to say to any of this. She was trying not to notice the scattering of freckles on Nora’s chest, because that didn’t seem like the kind of thing she should be noticing while they were talking about the time she’d been murdered.

“But I already knew I wanted to.” Nora shrugged helplessly. “It wrecked us,” she said again. “I just need you to understand that.”

\-------

"Have I mentioned lately," said Bill, "how much I appreciate you showing my wife a good time while I'm indisposed?"

Margo spluttered, gaze jerking up from her crossword puzzle. Her cheeks were warm, the moment to laugh it off was already passing, and even an "indisposed" Bill Smithback could be a dangerous reader of people.

But the crow of triumph she expected didn’t come. He had to know he’d gotten a rise out of her, but to her surprise he didn’t pursue the advantage. “Where is she tonight, anyway? Shacked up with the potsherds?”

Margo shook her head. “She’s at some press dinner--she said there was an award she had to go accept on your behalf.”

“The Gotham Press Club? Oh, crap, was that tonight?” Bill grimaced. “God, poor Nora, I’ve gotta make that up to her somehow. She hates those things.”

\-------

It was past two AM when Margo’s cell phone rang. She groped to find it on the nightstand, flipped it open, and mumbled into what she hoped was the right end of it.

“Margo?” a gruff voice answered.

She sat bolt upright. “Lieutenant D’Agosta?”

“Look, can you come down to the precinct? Dr. Kelly’s here, and she’s pretty shaken up. Someone needs to come get her--it’s a real shitshow.”

“The precinct?” said Margo, scrambling out of bed. “What happened?”

“There was a murder at the Gotham Press Club.”

\-------

The squad room was a hellscape, full of weeping and babbling people in tuxedos and evening gowns. D’Agosta, bone weary in his shirtsleeves, escorted Margo through it by the elbow as if he were guiding her through a minefield. “I can only find so many things to do outside my own office,” he warned her. “But I’ll give you two a few minutes. She let a medic give her something to help her calm down, but--” He shook his head as he opened his office door for her.

“Thanks,” said Margo, and shut the door behind her.

Nora was sitting in the one shabby chair in front of the desk. D’Agosta’s brown suit jacket was draped incongruously over her deep blue satin dress, but it fell away when she jumped to her feet. Her eyes were red-rimmed, her concealer was failing to hide the yellow-green of her healing black eye, and her mascara and eyeliner were everywhere but where they were supposed to be.

She was, as ever, the most beautiful sight in the world, and Margo gathered her up and clung.

“Caitlyn’s dead, Margo,” said Nora raggedly, face buried in her hair. “I dragged her into this and now she’s dead.”

Margo went cold; she hadn’t known it was Caitlyn who’d been killed. She hadn’t thought to ask. “It’s not your fault,” she said, arms tight around Nora’s waist.

“No, no, Margo, listen, you have to listen.” Nora pulled away and gripped Margo by the elbows. “It was Fearing.”

“ _What?_ ”

“It was Fearing again, I swear to God.”

“Fearing’s supposed to be dead.”

“He sure as hell looked it,” said Nora, with a spark of humor through her distress. “When he dragged himself in there and went right up to Caitlyn and--” She closed her eyes and set her jaw. “He looked just like the night he attacked Bill. Worse. I guess he would, if he’s, if he’s what people are saying he is.”

“I believe you,” said Margo. She drew her closer again and ran her hand down Nora’s back, trying to soothe the tension there. Trying not to feel anything whatsoever about how much skin the dress left uncovered under her fingers.

“D’Agosta says he believes us, too, but--” Nora was relaxing a bit in Margo’s arms, but not pulling away yet. “I keep thinking I see him around, you know? Just on the street, following me, disappearing around corners. And I’m not imagining it,” she added, with preemptive sharpness.

“I know,” said Margo. She might not trust herself any more when she saw things out of the corner of her eye, but she trusted Nora, all the same.

“This needs to stop,” said Nora. “If someone is out to get Bill--or me, or _you,_ God knows anyone could tell you spend all your time with us--” There was a chill calm coming over her wrecked face, and Margo suddenly glimpsed exactly what Bill was worried about. “I don’t understand what’s happening to us, but I can’t let it go on.”

Margo could have told her it was going to be okay, but they both knew better. “Come home with me,” she said instead, smoothing a hand over Nora’s hair. “Come on. We’ll look at it fresh in the morning.”

“Someone should tell Bill,” said Nora. “He knew her, a little.”

“In the morning,” Margo repeated, more firmly. It wasn’t like they could just call up the clinic at three in the morning. "Can I borrow your keys? I'll drop you off at my place and then go grab you a change of clothes."

"You can have my spare for now. I've just been carrying it around since the locks got changed last week." Nora fumbled in her evening bag. “You know you don’t have to babysit me, right?”

The question astonished Margo; she understood suddenly why Nora had resented hearing the question from her. She didn’t know what she _wouldn’t_ have done to make Nora feel safe. 

\-------

Margo let herself quietly into Bill and Nora's apartment, flipping on lights as she went. She'd been here before, of course, but it seemed like a totally different place now, still and empty in the predawn hours. The living room and kitchen were clean, all traces of violence professionally erased.

Maybe too clean. Nora had been crashing intermittently at Margo’s place, where she seemed to sleep more easily, but Margo wondered afresh just how little time Nora had been spending here. She tabled the question for later and went on into the bedroom, where she stuffed some of Nora's things in a tote bag--change of clothes, pajamas, sneakers--and was trying to figure out which toothbrush was whose when something creaked.

Margo turned around slowly and saw nothing.

Treading more carefully now, she slipped back into the bedroom and looked around. There was nobody else there, no sign of disturbance--but then another creak, metallic-sounding, and a bulky shadow slid across the bedroom curtains.

The fire escape. Someone was--

Margo strode across the room and yanked the curtains open. The fire escape was dimly lit from the street, but unquestionably empty. There had been a breeze or something rattling the stairs; that was all. She decided she probably had an extra toothbrush in her own bathroom, checked through the bag, and threw it over her shoulder.

Nora was back at her place, so that was where Margo needed to be. It was only the long night, and her shitty nerves, that made her think something was tapping at the window behind her as she left.

\-------

The next time she saw Bill he was in high spirits, having recently progressed to eating solid food again. The news of Caitlyn’s death subued him somewhat, but he still seemed wholly on point and himself again, and Margo found she felt lighter for it.

“So what’s the official line these days?” he asked, between mouthfuls of hospital-generic fruit salad. He’d already downed three cups, with the kind of fervor he usually reserved for the caviar at museum galas.

"D'Agosta is sure it's the Ville by now. So’s the press. Pendergast--" Margo shrugged. "Who ever knows what he thinks?"

"I don't buy it," said Bill unexpectedly. "It doesn't feel right."

Nora, who had taken to sitting sideways on his bed with her legs thrown over his shins, eyed him with doubt. "Narratively? Or factually?"

"Both. Trust me, I've met a lot of people who were willing to kill to keep someone out of their business. But not by going full George Romero at a press awards dinner, for God's sake. The whole city is looking at the Ville now. It doesn't make sense. It's the kind of thing--" He sucked pensively at his spoon. "It's the kind of show you put on if you want to look untouchable. And the Ville isn't."

"Well, there's something in the woods up there," said Nora. "Caitlyn and I saw it. It _chased_ us.”

“You’re really having all the fun without me, aren’t you?” said Bill. Margo wondered exactly how much Nora had told him about that particular nocturnal adventure.

“I just want to know exactly what I saw before I offer a theory.”

Margo sank lower in the visitor’s armchair, kicked her own feet up on the edge of Bill’s bed, and frowned at the ceiling. “D’Agosta asked me something a while back,” she said. “He wanted to know if Fearing could have taken a drug to shut down his vitals, and there’s no such thing, but I’ve been thinking since then. There are all kinds of drugs and botanicals that can increase suggestibility, make people act shambling and mindless. Hell, if it comes to that, a well-aimed ice pick through the eye would do it.”

“Charming,” said Bill. “And people say I’m professionally bloodthirsty.”

“Fearing’s sister ID’d his body,” Nora reminded them. “And he _looked_ dead the other night. Bloated. Rotting.” She shuddered.

“This is useless,” Margo sighed. “We’re going in circles. There’s something we need that we’re not seeing.”

\------

Margo had always known pretty much immediately whether or not she was attracted to someone. And she’d always been sure that she wasn’t the least bit interested in Bill Smithback, nor he in her.

When they met they’d both been new at the museum, and in their respective careers; both recent transplants from Boston, even. They'd simply grown together--with the help of a shared near-death experience or three. He’d flirted sometimes, but only ever to annoy her, and that was all there had ever been to it; she’d never doubted that.

So it was a nasty shock when she glanced up at him one day, sitting together in a rare peaceable silence in his hospital room, and in the next moment was gripping the arms of her chair, on the verge of getting up and going to him and-- _and what?_ she asked herself, appalled. _What do you think you’re going to do?_

Bill was propped up on about fifty pillows reading an Ambrose Bierce paperback, so well-loved that the title had flaked off the spine. He was rumpling the pages absently with his thumb; the back of his hand was splotched pink from a recent acid burn, which Margo had never gotten around to learning the exact cause of.

What she wanted more than anything, out of the blue, was to kiss him. Just for being so improbably and miraculously alive, despite every monster and killer and flood.

He was more or less the same person she’d known nearly her entire adult life--no more handsome, no less exasperating, only a little bit wiser. The same Bill Smithback who’d sat with her years ago and washed her face and hands while her leg was screaming with pain, offering the only comfort he had to give. But he looked somehow brand new today--beloved, _necessary_ \--

She stood up after all, but it was to go into the bathroom, where she locked herself in and sat down on the toilet lid. And because Margo believed in looking things in the face, she made herself think _I’m in love with him,_ and then _I’m in love with both of them,_ and then she sat with those concepts until she felt comparatively unlikely to vomit.

Bill glanced up from his book when she returned; God only knew what he read in her face. “You okay over there?”

Margo settled back into her chair and kicked her sneakers up on the edge of his bed, just as though something bright and terrifying wasn’t cracking open and unfurling in her chest. She nudged one foot against his shin through the blankets--the most physical contact she dared allow herself. “I’m just glad you’re still here.”

“Trust me, that makes two of us.” He grinned at her over his book, eyes warm.

Well, Margo thought grimly, she’d never yet let her feelings get the better of her. She’d missed this, somehow, boiling up slow while she was worrying about her feelings for Nora. But she’d managed that so far, and she’d manage this, too.

\-------

Nora wasn’t answering the phone. Not her cell, and not the landline in her lab.

Margo had been hoping to drag her out to dinner. When she couldn’t get Nora on the phone, she’d come around to West End Avenue and knocked on the door; no response here, either. She’d taken the elevator down and asked the doorman, who said he hadn’t seen Dr. Kelly since she got home from work yesterday evening, but he’d come on duty at eleven so he had probably just missed her, and did Margo know how Mr. Smithback was doing?

Now she was back upstairs, pacing in the carpeted hallway, wondering whether she was the correct amount of worried. It was perfectly possible, knowing Nora, that she’d gotten caught up in some part of her work and was just ignoring her phone.

Margo clicked through the museum staff in her phone and settled on Dr. Hornby; they didn’t know each other very well, but she vaguely recalled that his office was the closest to Nora’s remote basement lab.

"The infamous Dr. Green!" he said. "What a pleasure to hear from you."

"Sorry, this is a little awkward," said Margo. "But I'm trying to get hold of Dr. Kelly and she's not answering her cell phone. Do you know if she's still in her lab?"

"Still? There’s no still about it." He clucked. "She hasn't been in all day. Didn't so much as call in, I hear. I thought there might have been some change with her husband."

"No, no, he's doing fine." Margo frowned. “Thanks,” she added vaguely, and shut her phone. Then she thumbed through her key ring, found the spare Nora had lent her, and unlocked the door.

The living room was much as she’d seen it before--so neat it looked almost unlived-in. The kitchen was similarly sterile. Down the hall, the bedroom door was ajar, and Margo pushed it all the way open.

There was a cold breeze in the room; the window was open. It had, in fact, been slammed open so forcefully that the glass had shattered and lay glittering all over the crumpled rug. There was a small duffel thrown on the bed, half-packed with rope and a first aid kit, and a set of dark clothes much like the ones Nora had worn last time she went into Inwood Hill Park with Caitlyn. One of the nightstands had been knocked over, scattering a stack of books across the room, and the rug was bunched up under the window like someone had been dragged that way. The dark smear on the windowsill might easily have been blood.

“Oh, no,” said Margo, hands over her mouth. “Oh, no, no, no--”

\-------

She had to explain it to D’Agosta, and then again to Pendergast when he materialized in the NYPD’s wake, and once they had all the facts straight the next thing D’Agosta asked was: “How’s Smithback holding up?”

“You mean, should you put off telling him about this,” said Margo. “And I don’t think you should. I mean, he’s still sleeping about sixteen hours a day, but he’s pretty sharp when he’s awake.” It also seemed to her that it might be unwise to put this spark to the tinder of Bill’s obvious cabin fever; but it would be wrong to hide this from him, all the same.

“I’m willing to make the call,” said Pendergast. He took out his phone and moved away into a corner. Margo, D’Agosta, and the assorted other cops roaming the apartment politely pretended not to listen while Pendergast spoke into the phone, low and soothing--and then with the pointedly too-even tone he took with people who were shouting at him.

“I gotta go,” said Margo. “Can I go? I need air, I feel sick.”

“Yeah, go, do whatever you need to,” said D’Agosta. “We’ll call you when we know anything.”

Margo didn’t actually have anywhere to go. She drifted on autopilot: out of the apartment, into the elevator, out of the elevator, past the doorman and out onto the street. At that point she ran out of ideas and sat down on the front steps.

Her cell phone warbled, and she answered it, still on autopilot.

“You’ll never guess what I just learned.”

“Bill?”

“Funny story. I tried to check myself out of here, and the nurse did not say--as you might expect--no, Mr. Smithback, you’re not healthy enough to leave. He said no, Mr. Smithback, we have been instructed by Mr. Pendergast to exercise maximum caution in any decisions regarding your release. Which means I’m healed up enough to go home, the assholes just won’t let me.”

Margo had seen him wound up this high before, on one scent or another, but this torrent had a brittle edge that alarmed her. “What are you trying to do?”

“Get out of here, obviously. I can call a cab back to New York.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Margo, scrambling to her feet. “Do not call a cab, okay? Don’t--don’t make any bedsheet ropes, don’t do anything.”

“Well, now you mention it--”

“Stop it!” Margo yelled, startling herself. She gritted her teeth. She was angry, and she didn’t know exactly why or who at, but she knew it wasn’t him. “Just sit tight. I’m coming.”

\-------

Bill was already fully dressed when she got to the Feversham Clinic. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, twisting a paper napkin to shreds in his hands. “Any news yet?”

Margo shook her head. "I was just explaining to the doctors that you’re leaving."

"What, just like that?"

She rattled a paper bag at him. "I told them you were leaving, that once you get a bad idea in your head neither God nor man can get it out again, and that the only real question was whether you were leaving with or without prescriptions for all the pills keeping you alive right now."

“You are a jewel among women,” said Bill, sitting up straighter. “So what’s the plan?”

“This is the plan,” said Margo. “The plan is we hang together until there’s news. Here, back in the city, wherever works, and clearly here isn’t going to work for you.”

“That’s it?” He stared at her. “We’re not going to _do_ anything? We don’t lift a single damn finger to find Nora? Who are you, and where’s the Margo Green I know?”

This was, unfortunately, a question Margo had asked herself a lot over the past several months, and it made something nasty crawl up her spine.

“If you think,” she said, and then she choked on freshly rising anger, and had to start over. “If you think I’m going to let _every_ person I love run right off a cliff because they think it’s better than doing nothing--”

“Of course it’s better!”

“So what, Bill? What are you going to do?” Margo spread her hands. “How long can you even stay on your feet right now? You want to go wade into whatever is going on at the Ville? You want to find out how many things are growing in Inwood Hill Park that you really don’t want in your healing puncture wounds, and what happens to you once they are? Because I can tell you, at length.”

“Fuck Inwood Hill Park,” said Bill. “I’m not doing this again. I’m not sitting on my ass in a cute safe room in scenic little Cold Spring while--” He pushed his hair violently back out of his face; it stayed put no better than it ever had. And then he said, baldly: “You died, Margo.”

She’d always made a joke of it in her own head, _the time I got murdered,_ a way to make the event more palatable. But it shocked her into silence now, hearing it aloud from someone else. Diogenes had stabbed and then drugged her; everyone she loved had been told she was dead; she had been outside of the world for months while they mourned her. In all those ways they were right, her and Bill both. She had died.

“I left town and came back and you were dead,” he continued. “Just like that, like the floor dropping out from--from under me and Nora both. So don’t you tell me to sit tight and wait for it to happen again, okay? We’re not going to lose her the way we lost you.”

He stopped, blinking in comical surprise at his own outburst. The familiar sharp lines of his face were drawn even tighter by fear, and Margo became freshly aware of something: the quiet, humming certainty of loving him, which after that first recent shock of realization had so easily harmonized with the tumult of loving Nora.

No, she would not leave him alone in this, no matter what.

She wanted to hug him, but wasn't sure whether she could without hurting him. Instead she crouched down and took him by both hands, forcing him to look her in the eye. "Bill," said Margo. "I'm here with you, okay? But I need you here with me."

He gave himself a little shake, and then his arms came around her after all, desperately tight. Margo cupped his head, the only place she could be sure was uninjured. His hair was soft under her fingers. "This is some sabbatical you're getting, isn’t it?” he said into her shoulder. “Nice and relaxing. Just what the doctor ordered.”

\-------

She stopped at a gas station in Westchester to call Pendergast, because as little as she was in the mood to be benevolently jerked around, it was a worse idea to just vanish off the map.

When she was done telling him what she’d done, all he said was “Are you sure this is wise, Dr. Green?” with the barest hint of acid necessary to indicate he, himself, was not.

“No,” said Margo, pacing in front of the drink cooler inside the tiny convenience mart. “I don’t think there is a wise option. But there was no way Bill was going to stay in Cold Spring, and he shouldn’t be alone right now.”

Especially, she didn’t say, if Bill gets any bright ideas tonight, or if someone comes after him again.

“I would prefer you remained outside the city, but I don’t have time to argue the point further. The key thing is to keep Mr. Smithback and yourself out of sight, wherever you see fit.” He paused; there was a rising clamor in the background. “And I advise you to keep him away from the television if at all possible.”

“Why?” said Margo. “What’s on--” She turned automatically to look at the little TV behind the counter. “Oh, my God,” she said weakly, and flipped her phone closed without a goodbye.

Nora’s haggard face was on the screen. Her lips moved, but if there was any sound, the clatter of the guy arranging magazines behind the counter drowned it out. The quality of the black-and-white video was so poor that for a moment it seemed hallucinatory, the vision Margo would have in a horror movie just as her sanity began to snap. Then the blue news chyron appeared: NORA KELLY KIDNAPPER RELEASES VIDEO, NO DEMANDS.

The guy at the cash register glanced up, following her gaze to the TV. "Terrible thing," he said, with distinct relish. "Happening to a pretty girl like that. You hear about that writer husband of hers? Carved up like a turkey."

Icy cold swept through Margo. She jolted forward a step without thought, braced as if to vault the counter, and the guy took a stumbling step back.

The video was playing again on TV. Somewhere in the silent store, Nora's voice whispered through a turned-down speaker. "Help me,” she was saying. “Help me.”

"Just trying to make conversation, lady," said the register guy nervously. "Fuckin' sue me, jesus."

Margo paid for her gas without a word and left.

Bill was more awake when she got back in the car than when she’d gotten out, and he flinched at whatever expression Margo was wearing. “What happened?”

"Can you drive the rest of the way if you have to?" 

"I guess," he said. "But--"

"Please, Bill," said Margo, abandoning her last hopes of dignity.

He got out, thank God, unfolding stiffly from his seat and making his slow way around to get back in on the other side. "Should I ask?”

Margo slid into the passenger side and tipped forward until her forehead rested on cool plastic. "I'm trying to figure out whether I'm having an anxiety attack or just really, really angry," she said to the glovebox door. "I can't drive like this and I can't drive on Xanax. And I will not be taking followup questions from the _Times_ , thank you."

Several seconds' uncomfortable silence, broken by a thunk as the driver's seat slid back several inches; then a tentative hand squeezed her shoulder. “If the _Times_ may make an observation,” said Bill, “you sound awfully coherent for someone having an anxiety attack. That said, the _Times_ has no particular desire to die in a road rage incident, either.”

He was right. Margo was trembling, her head buzzing, but the feeling of being swallowed up into her own brain wasn’t coming. She knew, for better or worse, exactly where they were and what was happening; it just rightfully made her want to fucking scream.

It was herself she was angry at, of course, as it so often was these days. Sometimes Margo felt like all that was left of her was fear and anger--and love, of course, but that was just something else she had to constantly fight down. Christ, she was tired of being at war with herself all the time.

There was one thing she could do, and that was to say the hell with Pendergast’s little mind games, however well-intentioned. “Whoever took Nora released a video--it was on the news. She looks okay,” she added quickly. “Scared. Unhurt. It was just a couple of seconds.”

“Good,” said Bill. He had one of his shiny new-cut apartment keys out, turning it over in his fingers, rubbing his thumb along the jagged edge. “That’s good, right?”

It took a minute for Margo to process the question. She wanted to forget the sight of Nora’s hollow, terrified eyes, but she wanted to see the video again, too. She was greedy for whatever glimpse of Nora she could get.

Margo took a deep, slow breath. “Yeah, I think it’s good,” she said. “But I’m guessing the Ville doesn’t make a habit of broadcasting their rituals to the whole city.”

“They sure don’t.” Bill sagged back against his seat. “Which tells us that Nora could be, oh, anywhere _except_ the park.”

“It hasn’t been our finest hour, deductively speaking,” said Margo. “But we have to go somewhere.”

Bill spun the keyring around his finger and managed a pained semblance of a smile. “I never thought I’d get to ask you this, lotus blossom, but: your place or mine?”

\-------

"She'll be fine," said Margo, just in case one of them believed it the hundredth time around. "Pendergast and D’Agosta will find her."

"Yeah, sure," said Bill, sounding unconvinced. He picked up a back issue of _Museology_ from Margo’s coffee table, turned it over in his hands, and put it down again.

“Would you sit down?” said Margo. This was by far the longest he'd been on his feet in weeks. The increasing stiffness of his pacing was awakening a sympathetic ache in her own back, right between her shoulder blades.

“I can’t sit down,” said Bill. “I feel so fucking helpless. I don’t get it, okay? I don’t get why Nora had to beat herself up like this, go around stirring up hornet’s nests--”

Margo laughed, only a little hysterically, like she wasn’t about ready to climb the walls herself. “Oh, no, you wouldn’t know what that feels like at all.”

“Me? Hornet’s nests? Never.” Bill made one more slow circuit of the room, moving ever more painfully.

“Would you sit down,” said Margo again, reaching for him. “I feel like _I’m_ about to pop my stitches, watching you fidget, and the last of mine came out months ago.”

To her astonishment, Bill took her hand and lowered himself, painfully slowly, onto the sofa next to her.

Margo leaned up and kissed his cheek; it didn’t seem wrong at all, in the moment. “Nora needs us here,” she said, trying to convince herself more than him, when in fact she felt just about to climb out of her skin. Bill’s hand in hers was the only thing keeping her tethered to the ground. “We need to be here, for--for her to come home to.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes.

“No, I can’t,” said Margo suddenly, and made to get up. “She’s scared, she’s hurt, we have to get to her, we have to do something--”

Bill tugged her back down by the arm. “If even I can sit still,” he began, with a ghastly echo of his usual self-deprecating humor, but he didn’t seem to know how to finish.

Margo settled back down, slowly, and Bill’s other arm fell around her shoulders. They sat that way, in stasis, until Bill’s phone began to ring.

“She escaped,” he said, staring at Margo. “She’s okay, Pendergast’s with her. She escaped.”

\-------

Presumably they got to the hospital somehow, but to Margo it seemed as though she blinked and the room changed under them; one moment they were huddled together on her sofa, the next moment on orange plastic chairs.

And suddenly there was Nora, battered but lovely, coming towards them in a grubby sweater and torn jeans. Margo was dimly aware that she and Bill were identically transfixed, but she’d forgotten how to pretend otherwise.

"Nora," said Bill hoarsely. Margo remembered too late how entangled they were, and tried to extricate herself and sit up.

But Nora was already crouching in front of them--not without a grimace of pain--and she gripped Margo's hand tight, holding her in place. “God, I missed you both.” She gave Bill a quick hard kiss. “They let you out of the clinic?”

“I wouldn't say they _let_ me,” said Bill. “Cyclone Margo blew through and carried me away.”

Margo grinned, a little embarrassed, and glanced down at their triply joined hands. Nora had obviously gotten to wash up, but there were traces of something dark red under her nails that Margo didn’t want to contemplate.

"If they try to keep me overnight," Nora said, low and deathly serious, "I will start screaming and never stop."

A doctor had followed her into the waiting room, Margo realized, and was making indignant noises about bruised ribs and dehydration; about rest and ice and electrolytes. “Don’t worry,” she said to him. “We’ll take good care of her.”

\-------

“I’m sorry,” said Margo in Nora’s ear, once they were in the back of a cab. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I’m sorry if you didn’t think I’d have your back.”

Nora had downed two bottles of Gatorade with alarming speed and was working on a third, but she lowered it long enough to shake her head. “Margo, no, you--I knew it was a terrible idea, going back out there. That’s why I didn’t tell you I was going. I knew you’d know better.” The cab pulled to a stop, and Nora glanced out the window and said, “Oh.”

Only then did Margo realize she’d given the cabbie her own address. “I just thought,” she said, although she hadn’t actually, at all. “Your place isn’t in great shape, and you have a few things here, so--”

The cabbie turned to squint at them, sensing a disturbance in his rhythm. “You folks getting out, or what?”

“I gotta lie down,” said Bill, abrupt and decisive. “I’m done.” Since they left the hospital he'd been increasingly quiet, only occasionally murmuring to Nora as she slumped ever more heavily against his shoulder. Margo had thought he, too, was falling asleep, but looking at him now, she saw his face was white and strained.

It was an undignified struggle, because Bill had several inches on Nora and a full foot on Margo, but they maneuvered him into the guest room, where he crumpled sideways onto the bed with a groan and only afterwards bothered to kick off his shoes.

“Jesus,” said Nora succinctly, sitting down on the edge of the bed next to him. She stripped her grimy sweater over her head and hurled it, disgusted, into a corner. Under her thin white tank top, a monstrous dark bruise was pooling on her back. “I should clean up,” she said, and hesitated, resting her hand on Bill’s knee for a moment.

“Could be worse,” said Margo. “Bill had to help pull me out of a sewer once.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Bill. His eyes were closed, and one side of his mouth was muffled in the pillow, but he sounded fully awake. “No, seriously, don’t mention it, I don’t want to be reminded. The smell was in my nose for weeks.”

When Nora heaved herself to her feet and went down the hall to the bathroom, Margo got up too, but only long enough to go to the living room and return with Bill’s jumble of prescription bottles. He looked mildly affronted when she handed them over, but sat up enough to wash the pills down, and in a few minutes some of the tension in his face began to ease.

Nora came back remarkably soon, hair dripping, scrubbed pink, in a t-shirt and boxers she’d forgotten the last time she slept here. She’d borrowed an ice pack from Margo’s kitchen and was holding it against her back. The domesticity of it all gave Margo a twinge of guilt, even though this was her own apartment. “It’s been a long night,” she said, with what she hoped wasn’t audible reluctance. “I’ll get to bed, let you two--”

“Wait,” said Nora, twisting her wet hair restlessly around her fingers. She had come close enough that Margo, sitting on the bed next to Bill’s hip, had to look up at her.

Something about this, some kind of married-people telepathy Margo wasn’t privy to, prompted Bill to say: “Nora, darling, you really know how to pick a moment.”

“Never mind the moment,” said Nora. “After the night I’ve had, I don’t want to wait any longer, okay?”

“Wait for what?” said Margo. Confusion was beginning to set in, eating away at the relief of having them both here, safe if not exactly well. 

One of Bill’s pointy knees nudged gently against her back, and his hand settled on her arm: a reassurance against something, and maybe Margo had a little bit of telepathy after all, because that was when the beginning of a realization shivered through her.

“We’ve been wanting to tell you--”

“We’ve been _trying_ to tell you,” said Bill, “but you just wouldn’t take a hint.”

“We’re yours for the asking,” Nora said, very soft. “Both of us. If you’d just ask already.” And then she leaned down stiffly and kissed Margo once, briefly: a question.

For a moment all Margo could do was stare--but before she even processed what was happening, she knew the only answer. “Please,” she said, voice breaking on it, “oh, please,” took Nora’s face in both hands, and kissed her again, soundly.

She had feared whatever fresh spark was growing between her and Bill; she had feared her devotion to Nora. She had never once imagined Nora wanting _her,_ the missing piece that transmuted an array of dangers into this joyous whole.

”Look, I love a good show as much as the next--” Bill began, plaintively, so when Margo twisted around to kiss him too it was mostly to shut him the hell up. It worked shockingly well; he sagged against her with a small, choked sound that made her heart ache.

“Bill,” she said helplessly. “Oh my God.”

“Little weird, huh?” He grinned shakily up at her. She thought he might, inconceivably, have been nervous.

"This is so far beyond weird,” said Margo. But she let her forehead rest on his shoulder for a moment, and then he was pulling away, making just enough space for Nora to ease herself stiffly down between them.

They didn’t really all fit; the bed would barely be big enough for Bill and Nora to share overnight without aggravating their various injuries. But Nora reached for Margo’s arm and drew it around her own waist. From her other side, Bill threw an arm over both of them, and--well, Margo thought inadequately, here they all were.

An enormous weight was lifting from her chest; she thought she might float away if they weren’t holding on to her. She had forgotten, she realized, what it was like to feel something so huge without being afraid of it.

Nora sighed, relaxing between them, and pressed her face into Margo's shoulder. "I had to make it back,” she said sleepily. "I had to make sure you knew."

Margo kissed her hair and thought again of the blood she'd seen under Nora's nails. She thought she could guess how hard she’d fought to survive, just to be here with them like this.

“I kept thinking,” said Nora, sounding smaller yet. “How I had someone to lose, and someone to gain, and I didn’t--I didn’t know which was--” She shuddered, let go of Margo, and in the next instant was sobbing into her hands.

“Shh,” said Bill, sounding a little wet himself. “Shh, hey.” He and Margo shifted closer, curving around Nora from either side like this was how they’d always been; his hand clenched in Margo’s shirt, as if to make sure of her, too.

It was still weird, Margo knew on some level, but there was nowhere else she could be; there was nowhere else at all.

\-------

It was a beautiful day, warm for November but still crisp, and Margo had decided to arrive early. 

The jumble of boulders was in Central Park, close enough to the museum to be convenient for Nora, far enough from it for Margo’s peace of mind. She could feel the museum through the trees, though, a looming shadow just waiting to swallow her up again come January.

 _Don’t be ridiculous,_ Margo told herself. _You love your job. You’ll feel better when you go back._ She took a deep breath and cracked open the copy of _Uncle Silas_ she’d brought.

She'd been feeling okay for an hour or so, sitting on a rock nursing coffee and reading, when she heard familiarly halting footsteps behind her.

“Afternoon, blossom.” Bill appeared in her peripheral vision, leaning one-handed against her rock. He was good at making it look casual; Margo might even have been fooled, if she hadn’t had to get so good at it herself. “Nice out-of-the-way spot you’ve found.”

He winked obnoxiously at her, and Margo rolled her eyes. But there really wasn’t anyone to see, so she closed her book and turned for a quick kiss--then, on impulse, tugged at his coat lapel and kissed him deeper.

“Hm,” said Bill, when they separated. He sounded gratifyingly breathless. “Dark roast?”

“Get your own!” said Margo, indignant, and moved her cup out of his reach.

He kissed the corner of her mouth once more, knuckles brushing her cheek, before easing himself down to sit on the ground next to her boulder; then he lay back on the grass, coat pooling around him, and closed his eyes with a contented sigh. “I really haven’t gotten enough fresh air lately.”

Margo still didn’t know when exactly their old equilibrium had been knocked askew, but she was realizing that she was glad. After moving in and out of each other's lives for so long, it felt good to discover that with Nora they could become something new and different.

It was baffling in theory, to be dating a married couple--and yet, in practice, it seemed to somehow be going well. It would go even better soon, once Bill’s doctor cleared him for more physical activity. Just the other night, after dinner, she’d slid into his lap on the sofa and they’d kissed, laughing and breathless, until Nora came back into the room and said “God, you look _so good_ together,” in such a strangled voice that Margo had had to retreat before something medically inadvisable happened.

Now she folded her arms across her bent knees and gazed down at him, pleasantly speculative, until he felt her scrutiny and cracked open an eye. "See something you like?"

"I've been wondering," said Margo, not untruthfully, "how I'd explain this to grad student Margo."

"Oh, she'd never forgive you for succumbing to my meager charms," said Bill cheerfully. "But at least she couldn’t fault your taste in women." He closed his eyes again and appeared to doze off.

Margo made it through another two chapters before Nora appeared from the direction of Central Park West and sat down next to Bill with her back against the boulder. "I’m here, sorry. Got stuck in a meeting." She stretched her legs out in front of her, one booted ankle crossed over the other, and smoothed her skirt over her knees.

“New exhibition?” said Margo, with a twinge of apprehension.

“Worse,” said Nora. “Budget. Let’s not dwell on it.”

The hell with it; Margo slid down off her boulder to join Bill and Nora on the ground. She would have liked to kiss Nora hello, but just then a gaggle of college students wandered past, squabbling good-naturedly. Margo settled for sitting as close as she could possibly get away with.

“I know we said we’d get lunch,” said Nora, glancing at her watch. “But I have to be back in half an hour. Can we just--sit?”

“Sounds good to me,” said Bill. He shifted around until he could rest his head on Nora’s thigh.

A month ago Margo hadn’t even known this was something she could want. Now she was happily warm from knee to shoulder where Nora was pressed against her side; Bill’s fingers had crept into her coat sleeve, and his thumb was rubbing hypnotic patterns on her wrist. She hadn’t felt this safe, this steady, in longer than she could remember.

“So I heard a real heart-warming story today,” said Bill, after a while. “As a matter of professional interest only, of course, I happened to notice that the _Times_ ran wire coverage of Nora’s kidnapping, which was supposed to be Bryce Harriman’s wheelhouse. So I called Davies to ask about it. I was hoping maybe our pal Bryce had stomach flu or something."

Nora snorted. “Any such luck?”

“No-- _but._ ” A sly smile began to spread across Bill’s face. “The city desk got an anonymous tip that night. Someone called in and said the whole Ville thing was a red herring, that Lucas Kline was the one who’d tried to kill me and kidnapped you, and the NYPD was going to raid his penthouse any minute. Harriman took a gamble on it, went haring off, and missed all the real fun. Not one word of useable copy. Not one!” He cackled.

“Bill,” said Nora in alarm. “You didn’t.”

“I would never. He doesn’t need my help embarrassing himself. Anyway, I was otherwise preoccupied that night, I promise you.”

"Well, it's his own fault if he believes every ridiculous tip he gets," said Margo.

She thought she'd said it casually enough, but Bill and Nora both turned to stare at her in comical slow motion.

" _Margo,_ " Bill breathed, with such blatant adoration that it embarrassed her.

"It seems to me he should know better," she said. "That's all."

Margo wasn't proud of making that phone call; it had been dirty pool for sure. But she hadn't been thinking clearly that night, and it had been a long hour driving upstate to get Bill, stewing in fear and helplessness the whole way. Whatever happened to Nora, the thought of Bryce Harriman getting his slimy typing fingers on it had seemed to her unbearable. It had not been a good idea, but it had been her only idea.

“It really would have been such a disappointing way to go out,” said Bill. "After everything we’ve been through. Killed by a guy who faked his own death just to play zombie-for-pay. I could at least have the satisfaction of being martyred for journalistic freedom.”

“I think we’d rather you didn’t go out at all,” said Nora.

\-------

A low mocking laugh, somewhere in the darkness, jolted Margo awake--then it melted away, and she realized she’d been dreaming. She counted five slow breaths, and then took inventory.

Herself: pounding heart, sweatpants, tank top--she tugged a wayward strap back into place. In front of her: Bill, face tipped close to hers even in sleep, one hand splayed heavy and grounding on her waist. His t-shirt, bunched up over his ribs; a half-revealed mass of old scars, and a slash of pink where a more recent wound was still healing. Behind him: a small lamp on the nightstand, lending an odd glow to his unruly hair. 

Behind her: a useless knot of blankets, and a cooling hollow in the sheets.

Margo kissed Bill’s shoulder and slid regretfully out of bed, pulling the blankets over him on her way.

Nora was in the kitchen, stirring hot chocolate mix into a pan of milk--fancy grated stuff that Margo had once gotten as a gift from her mother. She was trickling it into the milk a little at a time, as focused and methodical as mixing up an explosive.

“I thought you were sleeping better," said Margo tentatively.

“I have been," said Nora. "Even at home. I just have a lot on my mind, I guess."

Margo pulled out the lone stool, perched on it, and waited.

Finally, Nora stopped stirring. “Want some?” she asked, but Margo shook her head.

“You’re welcome to it,” she said. “I never got the hang of mixing that stuff right.”

Nora poured the hot chocolate into a mug and hopped up to sit on the counter, nudging her foot against Margo’s leg. “I don’t remember if I ever told you--I got funding for another expedition to Utah next summer. Found out on our anniversary, actually, so I nearly forgot about it for a while.”

“Congratulations,” said Margo. “That’s great! But--?”

“We were going to go back for a month. Me, Bill, a fresh team of archaeologists. A better supply of antibiotics, hopefully.” Nora smiled wryly. “But when I think about going back out there, I keep imagining--staying.”

Margo leaned forward, elbows propped on the counter. “Nora, what are you saying?”

“I don’t know,” said Nora, staring into her mug. “Maybe I just need to get out of town for a bit, and four weeks will do it. But it's been one nightmare after another this year, and now even our apartment doesn't feel right any more. I think--” She paused and set her shoulders. "I want to move back to Santa Fe."

“Oh, shit.” Margo rubbed her face. “Have you talked to Bill about this?”

Nora’s face went bleak. “Are you kidding? It’s one thing, roughing it in the desert or the jungle for a month or two, but leaving New York for good? There’s a non-zero chance that without access to Di Palo’s he’ll wither and die. And his job, jesus, the _Times_ , how can I ask--”

“You have to,” said Margo, although her heart was already sinking. Prosciutto or no prosciutto, Bill would move to _Antarctica_ if it was where Nora would be happy, and that would be the end of whatever they were doing here with her. “You have to ask him.”

“That’s what I was afraid you'd say,” said Nora mournfully. She set her mug aside, still untouched, and ran her fingers through Margo’s hair. “Hey, come here,” she said, but Margo was already sliding off the stool to meet her.

They traded long, aimless kisses for a while; Margo crowded Nora up against the counter, humming approval when Nora’s fingers tightened a little in her hair. She was determined to enjoy this for as long as she could have it.

“So, Dr. Green,” said Nora finally, arms draped around her neck. “How long since you did any field work?”

“Too long,” said Margo, through her warm daze. “Why?”

“I’ve been thinking,” said Nora, and then she smiled, wicked and irresistible. “And it seems to me the valley of Quivira would be an ethnopharmacologist’s dream. If you wanted to come with us.” She was blushing beautifully under her freckles. “We don’t have to talk about it now, not without Bill. But I don’t want you to think you’re--” She struggled visibly for a word. “Temporary.”

Margo's mouth went dry. She said the first inane thing that came into her head, which turned out to be: "I've never ridden a horse in my life."

Nora drew her closer and laughed; her breath tickled Margo's neck. "Well, that's a snag," she said. "But I guess we've survived worse."


End file.
